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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26805904">Attention</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArsonEmbre/pseuds/ArsonEmbre'>ArsonEmbre</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Kingdom Hearts (Video Games)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Best Friends, M/M, Something that I decided to write on a whim because updating the Seiner tag is up to ME now, Teenagers</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 08:20:44</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,950</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26805904</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArsonEmbre/pseuds/ArsonEmbre</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>How do you feel now that the attention is directed at you?</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Hayner/Seifer (Kingdom Hearts)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>11</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Attention</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>That one tag is not a joke I'm mad that this tag has not been updated (I choose not to see the nsfw fics I Do Not Want That) and this is my attempt to do...something I don't know. So here you go.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?”<br/><br/>The question had been asked by a bored blond boy, whose head had been resting on his desk with his neck tilted at an awkward, painful looking angle. There was a hunch in his back as he sat too close to the edge of his seat and both of his arms had hung lifelessly below him, fingertips almost touching the dingy carpet. His homework was all done, as he had finished it during lunch in hopes that his friend would do the same so that they could play more Smash together. Unfortunately, the idiot had forgotten, so he was forced to sit there and “suffer, I guess…” while the other boy finished his homework. Neither of them were allowed to touch the computer, the TV, or any of the game consoles lying around the room until *he* finished, which had soured the mood a bit.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The question had been asked by a desperate Hayner, who was running low on mental stimulation.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>His eyes weren’t even on the other person in the room: another boy, older by just a few months, sitting cross-leged on his bed and distressed by the sheet of homework in his lap. Because of this, he couldn’t see the quirk in his brow or the aggravated dip in the corner of his mouth as he twiddled his pencil, letting the eraser hit his bottom lip again and again in an attempt to make sense of what he was seeing. It was a shame that he hadn’t been looking, because he always thought that this was Seifer’s funniest face. It would have cheered him up a little more if he had.<br/><br/>Seifer looked up from the question that was stumping him, and like always, Hayner’s eyes move when Seifer’s does and they find one another’s--almost like magnets. His expression has softened, so Hayner can’t see what was once there. Instead, his eyes narrowed and his brow lifted. “What kind of question is that?”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“A normal one? I dunno. Answer it.” Hayner shrugged.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The boy in the beanie was the first to look away. This time, Hayner kept his eyes on him. “I thought you wanted me to hurry up so we could play the game.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“I do.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“I won’t be able to concentrate if you talk to me.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Well, that plan failed. He guessed that he really would just be bored until he finished. “Oh…”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>For a few beats of silence, the only sound in the room was that of Seifer’s pencil scribbling furiously against the paper. <em>A math question, probably</em>, Hayner thought to himself. The only time that he could actually <em>hear </em>Seifer write was when he was doing math--math was the only subject in school that made him angry and it apparently changed the way that he wrote for some reason. It also made his writing a little sloppier. He would rush his letters and stop doing the curly thing with the bottom of his Y’s and he always got accused of having someone else do his math homework for him because the teachers didn’t recognize his angry writing. All they had to do was look at all the other letters that were the exact same, but that was none of Hayner’s business.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“That um…” Hayner hadn’t realized that his eyes had fallen back to the floor, but he picked them back up as soon as the other boy had begun to speak again. “That came out weird sounding…I wasn’t trying to be--”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Oh, I know. It didn’t really sound like it.” He paused for a moment. “Did I sound sad to you?”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Seifer’s eyes were back on him again. “A little bit, yeah. Even if you weren’t, that sounded really shitty.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Hayner didn’t think so. Maybe the words would have been a bit more off putting if they were used with a different tone, but he’d known what Seifer had meant. He was angry, but not at him. His voice is sharper when his anger is directed at him. It was…pointed. Like Seifer wanted people to know that he was angry with them. When he had no one to rightfully direct that anger at, his voice felt dull. Hayner likened it to a pencil, and the point of a freshly sharpened one and the later rounded end of a one that had worn down from use. It was something he had noticed a long time ago, and it had helped him both understand his friend better and to stop getting his feelings hurt by the tiny misunderstandings that they used to have so often. His attention to detail made their friendship better, he thought.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“I wasn’t,” he assured him, finally pulling his head off of the desk and sitting up. He stretched his arms high over his head with a small grunt. “I learned a long time ago to tell the difference between when you’re being a jerk and when you’re being an ass,” he grinned once his stretch was done. “But we’re all good.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Something about what he’d said made Seifer stop writing, and that expression that Hayner thought was oh so amusing returned to his face. This time, however, the frustration was accompanied by something that threatened to turn into a smile at any second. “Do you pay this much attention to everyone or just me?”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>It would have been funny to say <em>just you</em> just to see what kind of reaction he’d get out of him, but he decided to go with the truth. With a gentle shrug, he turned in his chair to face his friend. “Pretty much, yeah. I like to figure out how people work so that, like, I know how to treat them. It makes it easier on everyone?”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Seifer didn’t understand that. His head had tilted the slightest bit to the left. So, Hayner continued. “Okay, say I do something that someone doesn’t really like. If I watch them, watch how they react to me, I can not do the things they don’t like so they feel comfortable around me. Or, I can reverse it and do the things that they like and make them happy.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>A hint of playfulness came to his face. “So you’re saying you know what makes people happy? People other than, you know, Pence, Olette, and Roxas?”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Most people. It’s not that hard to pay attention. You, for example, get really fucking excited about Chocolate Chip Ice Cream--”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“I fucking <em>do not</em>.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“But you try to hide it for some reason. There’ll be these moments where someone mentions it or you see it and you immediately tune into the conversation or turn to look for the price and then stop yourself because you don’t want anyone to know that you like it.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“I don’t do that--”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Yes you do!”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Nooo, no, <em>listen,</em>” Seifer spoke up. His voice was a little bit louder than it was. Seifer wanted to be heard, so Hayner decided to listen. The beanie clad boy had also set his homework aside, but it didn’t look like he’d realized what he had done. “I do kind of do that, but not because I like the ice cream. I do that because of that one time where you told that story about how you and your parents got stranded on that vacation to the…beach or…a cabin or something and you had to eat a bunch of the stuff for a couple days. And right after you said that, my mom came back from the store with a gallon and you freaked out so bad,” he laughed. “So it makes me laugh because it makes me think of you.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Hayner had opened his mouth to speak, but no words had come out. Not yet. For a couple of seconds, he remained stunned by the fact that someone had been paying attention to him for once. He did spend a good amount of his time paying attention to the people around him, and that sentiment was more often than not ignored, and much less frequently returned. Seifer himself had issues with attention, where he would end up telling the same life story a million times or reminding Seifer of something that he had forgotten twice a day. But Seifer had remembered that one stupid story about him. The most important part, anyway. It was more than a lot of people cared to remember about him, which was an exceptionally low bar, but it was…enough to make him smile.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>He’d ignored the impulse to tease him earlier, but he wouldn’t let it slide a second time. A smirk spread across his face as he placed a hand over his heart. “Aw, you think about me.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“More than I’d like to, actually,” Seifer muttered.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>That was a little more than Hayner was expecting to hear. He blinked twice in surprise. “What’s that mean?” he tried to laugh. It made him feel weird, and the fact that he didn’t recognize the expression on Seifer’s face anymore didn’t help the foreign feeling at all.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Don’t worry about it.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>No, that wouldn’t do. “Tell me.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“No,” he said in a voice that made Hayner think that if this had been written in a text message, Seifer might have added a heart emoji next to it just to be a shithead. And with that, his homework was back in his lap and he was doing the closest thing to concentrating that he could.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Tell me now or I’ll sit on you.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“If you sit on me I’ll scream for help and my mom’ll come up here and yell at you for distracting me.” Unfortunately, that was true. Hayner sighed, letting his head fall back on the desk with a particularly loud thud. It made Seifer laugh. “Are you fucking okay, dude?”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Okay was...half true. He wasn’t dying, but he did feel strange. After so many years of knowing him, there was now something entirely knew that Hayner would have to learn about his own friend. He didn’t think it was anything bad or dangerous, but he had prided himself on being able to know all of his friends like the backs of his hands. He did the work to know them as well as he did, and the sudden prospect of <em>not</em> knowing them--even just a little--was kind of scary to him. It made him feel like he’s missed something, like he hadn’t been paying enough attention, meaning that he wasn’t as good of a friend as he thought he was.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>On the other hand, Hayner found it exciting. There was a part of him that thought--if Seifer was going to change, or was in the process of changing--that he was excited to learn who his friend was becoming. Nobody ever stayed the exact same person forever, and they were nearing the end of their last year of high school. A lot was about to change, and he stood in the very middle of looking forward to it and being fearful of it.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>He took a deep breath. Maybe it wasn’t all that serious and he was starting to overthink again.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“I will be when you finish your homework,” he spat playfully.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Then stop talking to me!”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Then hurry up!”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“<em>Then stop talking to me!</em>” Seifer laughed, tossing his pencil at the boy. Hayner didn’t do anything about it. He even returned the pencil to him when asked. All of it would be settled in Smash once they finally got to play. And hell, maybe he would still sit on him and force an answer out of him if he could.</p>
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